Finally! Watch the ‘Whiplash’ Short Film That Started it All

After three Oscars and a gazillion rave reviews, it’s pretty hard to believe that writer-director Damien Chazelle had any trouble convincing Hollywood to help him make Whiplash, especially for a mere $3 million budget. But in today’s cautious, franchise-driven system, it’s almost impossible for a young director to get an original feature up off the ground, so before Chazelle could make what would become the Best Picture-nominated full-length movie, he had to prove himself with a short film, which you should watch from above.

J.K. Simmons — who’d go on to win a Best Supporting Actor for the finished feature — was on board from the start, paying Fletcher, the ferocious bandleader who rules his students through fear and horrible, off-color insults (many of which made it into the final film). The short is essentially a 17-minute distillation of one of the final film’s early, pivotal scenes, in which we get our first glimpse at the volatile, downright scary world of the Shaffer Institute, where the advanced band is a dictatorial regime.

Probably the biggest difference between the feature and the short — beyond the production values — is the actor playing Andrew, the young, naive drummer at the center of the storm: While Miles Teller eventually won great acclaim for the part, the role was originated by Johnny Simmons, whom you might recognize from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. That means that two different actors had to suffer under Fletcher’s wilting assault, which includes face-slaps, cymbal-throws, and threats of extremely unpleasant physical encounters.

The short film was a hit at Sundance in 2013, winning the Short Film Grand Jury prize and earning Chazelle the financing he needed to dive full-on into the abyss of obsession, abuse, and competitive jazz music. A year later, Chazelle would return to Sundance with the full-length version of Whiplash, which would win both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award… and then a year’s worth of festival awards, Golden Globes, and other honors.

Sometimes, single-minded dedication to an artistic goal does pay off.